Chapter 8 Easton #2
“I live in Boston and he lives in South Carolina and neither of us can move, so I’m not sure how it could be more. Anyway, are you gonna tell me the real reason your husband didn’t come?”
Her mouth opens—a small, shocked O. I think she’d like to lie about it, but she can’t come up with anything fast enough. “I’m so sorry,” she says, hitching a shoulder. “It wasn’t anything against you. He was just worried about it appearing as if he’d chosen sides.”
So maybe I wasn’t catastrophizing before. Maybe I was accurately predicting how this is going to go. No one can afford to offend the school’s golden boy. He has too much sway.
If Thomas and I don’t get back together, how many other people will distance themselves?
Maybe everyone.
Elijah returns with a new set of flatware for me. I thank him, my voice muted, and I leave the two of them to gamely carry on the conversation while I spin out, recalling a discussion Thomas and I had right after we started dating.
A few of his colleagues had been teasing him, saying I was only with him to get funding for my lab. It was a ridiculous conversation. I was a student...It wasn’t even my lab.
“You should be more offended than I am,” I told him. “Do these idiots really think you can only get a date by letting someone use you?”
He shrugged. “I believe the prevailing thought is that you are too hot to ever be taken seriously in academia otherwise.”
It was grossly misogynistic, and I wasn’t surprised at all. “Are they also giving you credit for the fact that I got in here? That I already went through med school?”
“You know how people are. If you’re a big enough jackass to say a woman’s too hot for academia, you’re also a big enough jackass to assume she’d been using her looks to get stuff all along.”
I didn’t love the way he seemed to take all this in stride. “You correct them, yes?”
He shrugged. “Of course. And I’m not telling you this to upset you. I’m just warning you that in dating me, there is always gonna be someone who implies you got as far as you did because of it.”
I wasn’t worried what idiots thought about anything back then. But maybe I should have been. Maybe this thing with Thomas won’t simply taint my life going forward...but has already tainted my past in ways I wasn’t aware of.
If my data skews in the wrong direction and we’re not back together next year, everyone’s going to assume I only got as far as I did because I had him propping me up.
“So you guys have known each other a long time?” Melissa asks.
“I’ve been best friends with his younger sister since we were little,” I explain.
Elijah glances at me, fighting a smile. “The first time she came to our house was in second grade. My mom made her and my sister do their homework and caught Easton just randomly scrawling numbers in her math workbook in order to get it done.”
I grin. “I actually had no idea how to add or subtract—I just hadn’t paid attention.
Elijah’s mom sat me down and made me learn right there.
” The memory is bittersweet. In part, because the school had already abandoned me, assuming I was just another unteachable Walsh.
In part, because Judy—the hero of this story—would later abandon me too.
“And the next time she came to our house,” Elijah continues, refilling Melissa’s wine and my own, “she’d completed the entire math book, a year’s worth of work, correctly, and had taught herself multiplication, so that she and Kelsey wouldn’t have to ‘waste their time’ on it.
She’d planned to fill in Kelsey’s book too.
” He laughs, but there’s something in his face that looks a lot like pride.
Melissa observes the two of us in a way that worries me. “You guys look like you belong together,” she concludes. “Like, it’s not as if I ever thought you didn’t belong with Thomas—you’re studying the same stuff and you’re both so telegenic, but wow, I don’t know what it is, but I can’t unsee it.”
My cheeks heat, but I can’t come up with a single polite way to refute what she said. I always thought we belonged together too.
Elijah smoothly turns the conversation to Melissa’s work and she lights up, falling for his charm the same way all women do, myself included.
When dinner concludes, we rise from the table and walk to the front. Elijah’s hand rests on the small of my back as we say good night to Melissa. I hate how much I like it, how much I want to lean into it when I know he’s just playing a part.
“You’re pretty good at relationships for someone who’s never been in a real one,” I tell him as we walk to his car.
He laughs. “You have such an odd, Easton-like way of saying thanks.”
“It’s what you’ve missed most, I’m sure.”
His gaze darts toward me, resting on my face for half a breath. And it’s wistful, as if there is something he’s missed.
Maybe he’s just gotten into the spirit of this fake romance better than I have.
We get in the car and turn toward the condo. “So was that enough?” he asks. “Will Thomas come running?”
I sigh and lean my head against the window. “I sort of doubt it. James didn’t come because he doesn’t want to piss off Thomas—he didn’t want to look like he’d taken my side. My guess is that Melissa’s not even going to mention she saw us, and this was all for nothing.”
He glances at me. “And what does that mean?”
“It means I’m even less inclined to save your grandmother’s life than I already was.”
“I’m pretty sure it would be impossible for you to be less inclined than you were.”
I laugh, and he does too.
I’m fucking miserable, possibly watching my career and relationship go down in flames, on a trip with my enemy. I’m not sure how I’m still laughing, but I suspect it could only happen with him.